Encouragement

I recently shared these thoughts on Instagram, and one person recommended I leave it in this space, too, so that it might be easier to find. I thought it was a pretty good idea.
There were so many years where our home lives and learning…

There is a modern, cultural pressure that we do everything, even that we do everything well. It has taken most of my adult life to learn there is a difference between doing all things well and doing well at all I do. The first emphasizes quantity––how…

http://cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HomeschoolingGarden.jpg600900Bethanyhttps://www.cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CloisteredAway-logo.jpgBethany2019-02-20 16:50:592019-02-20 21:10:05One Day at a Time

This space has been so quiet lately, allowing some much needed room to sort out bits of my heart and home. Time feels so tenuous, doesn't it––the practical substance of our days, yet impossible to grasp. Yet I have been grasping still.
It…

I have been feeling nervous––anxious even––about Liam transitioning into high school years of homeschooling. I have a loud inner-critic and a long memory for naysayers, unfortunately. And while I look back at the last decade without…

Our four children are five and a half years apart, meaning when we began our first formal year of homeschooling, I had a kindergartener, two preschoolers, and an older infant. I also had a calendar grid of all of the curriculum and plans I…

http://cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/HOMESCHOOLING_LITTLE_YEARS-1-2.jpg600900Bethanyhttps://www.cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CloisteredAway-logo.jpgBethany2017-03-06 11:51:572018-01-06 21:01:09Homeschooling | Encouragement for the Little Years

Several times in recent months, I have been quieted by the thought that Mark and I can choose how we educate our children, not simply the methodology we follow but to homeschool at all. Even on the hard days––and there are hard days––it…

I have a personal drive and eagerness to try and do everything, and of course also to do it perfectly (some of which I wrote about here). It is our cultural assumption that more is always better, that quality and quantity can pleasantly co-exist.…

Dear mother,
I've been thinking lately about the looming school year and also about this oppressive heat, how every living thing seems to wither under it. "And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite…

http://cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/durango-5.jpg599900Bethanyhttps://www.cloisteredaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CloisteredAway-logo.jpgBethany2016-07-27 11:42:122016-07-27 11:44:39an open letter to a homeschooling mother